Slashdot Mirror
US State Sues Web/SEO Firm For Deceiving Mom-and-Pops
netbuzz writes "The state of Washington is suing a search engine optimization and Web services outfit, based in Redmond, that has done business under the names Visible.net, Captures.com, and WebMarketingSource.com. In essence, the state says these entities have deceived mostly mom-and-pop sites through unfulfilled performance promises and financial shenanigans after charging up to $10,000 in up-front charges and more in monthly fees. About 90 complaints have been lodged over four years, the state says."
Seriously. The easy way to do this:
1. Go to Google. ...
2. Search for 'search engine optimization'.
3. Go to MSN
4. Repeat step 2
The company highest on the list of all search engines checked is probably the company you want.
My blog
Often times the road to being a victim like this is that the website owners don't have the technical competence to evaluate statements from SEO companies for truth. SEO companies also typically expend a lot of effort to maintain a positive image in search engine results.
I've had dealings with these types of companies before and the average SEO is very shady. They charge thousands of dollars promising every small business owner that they could be the next amazon.com if only they were higher in the search engine results. The reality is there is a lot more to online success than just ranking highly in search engines.
These small business owners though are most vulnerable because most don't have the ability to determine if the SEO company is credible and/or don't have enough knowledge about search engines to know what the true value is of the work the SEO will perform.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
While you're right in all the points you make, it doesn't mean that the suckers are entirely blameless. They fall prey to their own greed, in wanting to believe that there's a "magic formula" to success, that rather than building up their business via good customer service and word of mouth, that throwing a few grand at some "web expert" will make them rich.
The business next to the office I work at told me they were going to use such a scumbag. I told him he was wasting his money. Sure enough, a couple of months later, he was complaining that he couldn't get hold of the guy any more. He's SOL because TTMAR (Take The Money And Run) is SOP for SEO "experts".
Word of mouth is still the best advertising that money can't buy.
Yes and no (note: i work for a company that one of the products is SEO related);
The yes:
The SEO companies the "promise" higher rankings ARE a scam, and they are complete BS. 90% of SEO is guessing what google indexes, and those criteria do change pretty frequently. And because of the undefined nature of SEO, it is extremely easy to pull shit out of your ass and profess it is true, and take people's money. Any SEO guy that speaks in absolutes, is scamming you. Anything that seems like it isn't useful to the user, is bullshit.
The No:
SEO is actually real, and is necessary for pulling newer websites from lower in the rankings. Effective techniques are pretty easy, and they are listed below. All others that these stupid companies suggest are either BS or will not survive a google update in the future.
1) Page names in the URL that are relevant to what you are doing (not article11151.html)
2) Meta tags in the document that are relevant to it's content.
3) Clean HTML, use tags (such as h1) for what they were designed for
4) Internal linking (limits redundancy on pages)
5) Sitemap.xml
6) No javascript/flash content
Not much else is really necessary.
But yes, 99% of the SEO companys are praying on these small company's dumbness.
That's bizarre. Clients often ask about SEO stuff and we refuse to get into the black hat stuff. We tell them it's all about clean HTML, clean design and content, content, content. If they want lots of traffic they should put up a blog, post interesting videos on youtube, and offer other free informational services -- and/or buy adwords.
Link farms and doorway pages not only alienate prospects, but can get you punted from search engines.
I don't think anyone can honestly make a living from legitimate SEO. You can improve your existing services by incorporating SEO strategies into your web design and development practices, but if you're doing your job right to begin with then organic SEO follows naturally.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Is there any context in which "SEO" isn't a synonym for "worthless slimy huckster"? Ok, somebody has to tell mom and pop about proper use of metadata; but as for the rest? "Say, this slick gentleman promises to help me lie to search engines for a very reasonable price, he seems honest to me."
Here's a great example I learned at a web marketing conference (so I can't take credit for this pearl):
A major UK bank was flummoxed as to why less credible credit firms were ranking higher on Google for loans, even though their own popular "lending" website had been live for over a decade. The bank hired an SEO who interviewed them about the marketplace and its customers, researched the competition, and investigated rankings based on relevant keywords found in the web server referrer logs. This armed the SEO, an outsider to the banking industry, with a unique perspective from which he taught the bank to see through the eyes of their customers. In response to the SEO's advice the bank changed all their literature about "lending" to use the word "borrowing" instead. Poof - #1 spot on SERPs in a couple of weeks. It turns out that when people need money they're interested in "borrowing", not "lending".
SEO is all about empathy. You have to understand the business you're in and the problems you're solving for your customers. When people search the web they're looking for answers to their real problems, and the companies at the top of the SERPs are the ones who have the answer to that very problem.
Doesn't a company with that motivation deserve to be found? Do you feel that, in my example, the bank was being misleading?